My first week in Spain, I stayed at a crowded hostel. I was only supposed to stay for one night, but I extended it to five nights, after realizing that I had accidentally booked a manual car for my road trip instead of an automatic. An automatic car was out of my price range, and I couldn’t drive manual, so my road trip around the beautiful Spanish coast was out of the picture.
Lying on the bottom bunk in a sweaty crowded room without any private space, I felt angry for my stupidity, and increasingly anxious. My “analysis paralysis” on where to eat and what to see was sucking up the remaining hours of daylight, until I remembered two things.
First, jet lag can often trigger feelings of anxiety or depression, so I shouldn’t be beating myself up for having these emotions. I needed to treat myself with compassion after making an innocent mistake. Second, mood follows action, so I would feel better if I changed my environment.
I decided to close Google Maps and go on a long, meandering walk through Girona, ending up at a small tapas bar with tiny teetering tables spilling out into the street.
While waiting for my food, I walked to the corner of the bar, whose haphazard stacks of books had caught my eye. I found a binder full of drawings from customers, some scribbled messily in crayon, others etched on half-used napkins in pen. I asked the bartenders if I could draw something for them too, and they gladly brought over a piece of paper and a cup full of pens and markers.
I also found an old Spanish book, with words of wisdom accompanying cute animal photos, to put the reader in a good mood. Sitting alone, sipping deliciously cheap house wine, I flipped through its pages (I’ve attached some examples below (-:), absorbing its message that ups and downs were normal, and amazing people and experiences were just around the corner.
My mood lightened, and I got to work drawing. After I proudly handed my sketch of the narrow, crowded scene outside to the bartenders, they wrote me a list of their favorite places in the city. To express gratitude, I gave them a few chocolates that I had bought before dinner. That whole experience made me feel seen and nourished. I glowed from the inside out on my sleepy walk back to the hostel, and I slept easily that night.
During my next days in the hostel, though, I felt invisible. Over breakfast, people asked the same questions day after day. Girls traveling with their boyfriends glared at me or wouldn’t make eye contact, seeing me as a threat. Guys lost interest in me once they found out I was in a relationship. A hostel worker invited me to a barbecue with his friends, but after they got bored of asking me about Lindsay Lohan and her starring role in The Parent Trap, we ran out of conversation topics.
My first instinct was to take such lukewarm treatment to heart. However, I was reading The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem at the time, and I reminded myself of a lesson from the book: that my value and respect for myself came from within, not from the snap judgments of strangers who didn’t know me.
I had the freeing realization that this was the first time in my life that I was truly surrounded by people who had no preconception of me. Any judgment that they made about me was just them projecting onto me. While I couldn’t control their actions or treatment of me, I could control how I approached social situations. So, I resolved to keep coming to breakfast every day with a smile on my face, to greet people at the table, to initiate conversations. I stopped blaming myself for tepid conversations.
On my last day at the hostel, right before I checked out, I made my first deep connection with a girl from Malaysia who was traveling Europe for two weeks. We learned about why we were traveling and where we came from. We breathlessly swapped a few recommendations and compliments. Although our conversation lasted only ten minutes, it felt like medicine to me.
In the weeks since, I’ve come to learn that most people I meet, not just in travel but in life, will come and go without ceremony, barely causing a ripple. But, this has helped me recognize true connections quickly, and treasure them so much more.
I recently read a Carl Jung quote in The Artist’s Way that reinforces this lesson: “The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.”
That’s all I have for now! I’ll leave you with a recap of the lessons I’ve shared today:
- Jet lag has many surprising side effects, including anxiety and depression.
- Mood follows action (shoutout Dr. Andrew Huberman).
- Spend your first day in a new city just wandering around. Get lost.
- It’s okay to be sad when you’re traveling. Remind yourself that good times are around the corner.
- The only thing you can control is yourself.
- You won’t meet new friends every day, or even every week, and that’s okay.
tielqueen 